It's tough being a pianist, but someone's got to do it!

I’ve written before about becoming a pianist simply because we had a piano at home and my brother wasn’t able to attend one of his lessons so I was sent along in his stead. The fact that I took to it can probably be seen as blind luck. But I did take to it quite quickly. I’ve always had a natural keyboard facility and, for someone who wanted to be able to play favourite tv and film themes, the piano was the perfect vehicle. But the piano isn’t for everyone. Even if they want it to be!

In some ways, the piano is the easiest of instruments to start learning. Yes, I know, the violin only has four strings to worry about and a flautist only has to worry concentrate on playing one note at a time. But, once you’ve learnt which key is which (and although there are 88 keys on a standard piano, they do follow a pattern and it doesn’t take long to get used to it) you can put your finger down and confidently play a ‘C’. The beginner violinist, by contrast, puts their finger down on a string and will hopefully hear a C. But it might not be quite in tune. So they need to move their finger up or down along the string (depending on whether the note is sharp or flat) to get the tuning right. Their teacher may helpfully place a sticker on the fingerboard to show them where to place their finger but that assumes the violin is in tune in the first place. If the strings slip between lessons, the poor student needs to wait until the next lesson for the instrument to be tuned (very few beginners will learn to tune a violin for quite some time). And then, to begin with, they might only be plucking the string. Using the bow adds another variable which affects the sound being produced. A warm, soaring tone or, more likely, a cross between a bereaved cat and fingers scraping down a blackboard.  The lucky flautist will have been shown which keys to hold down and only has to blow. But… they do have to hold the flute correctly and the embouchure has to be right or nothing will come out at all.  So much easier to find the right key on the piano and press. Behold: a ‘C’!

The challenges of being a pianist and playing the piano.

However….that’s just the first few lessons. The violinist and the flautist will only be faced with one line of music whereas the pianist must cope with two – treble and bass. (Some 20th century piano music is written across three staves to make things clearer!). And where the string player or wind players’ fingers work in concert to play one note, the pianist will need each hand to be independent of each other whilst working together. The flautist will never play more than one note at a time. The violinist might play open strings (where neither string is depressed) but will not double-stop for many years. The pianist will need their left hand to accompany their right hand and either hand might need to play chords. It’s not unusual, in some repertoire, to be playing chords of three or four notes in each hand simultaneously. I think my late piano teacher summed it up perfectly when he said “the piano is the only instrument that gets harder, the better you get”. For this reason, the piano is not for everyone. There is multi-tasking both in the head and in the hands and I don’t mean to insult anyone when I say that not everyone can manage it.

There are other aspects to playing the piano which might be seen as ‘unfortunate’. Because piano music is, for want of a better phrase, self-sufficient, the pianist doesn’t need anyone else to be complete. Although there is music for most orchestral instruments which does not require an accompanist, orchestral instruments, for the most part, rely on a piano or membership to a group. Without them, wind instruments cannot, by themselves, provide harmony, only melody. The piano, of course, has it all. It doesn’t need anything else. Or anybody. Which can be a bit of a shame. Orchestral musicians will soon find themselves playing with other musicians in orchestras, wind groups, brass bands or other ensembles. They may also be accompanied by a teacher when they play in a concert or exam. But the pianist becomes an independent and sometimes solitary figure, only playing with other musicians if they are encouraged to play duets with other pianists. Only when they reach a higher level of playing might they be asked to accompany other musicians.

Accompanying is a skill on its own. Being a good pianist is not, by itself, enough. To accompany another musician requires the ability to ‘stick’ with them when they do not stay in time (either deliberately or accidentally). That requires quick thinking or good instincts (or both). The accompanist also needs to allow the solo instrument to take centre stage, being sure not to drown them out. On the other hand, there are times when the pianist should either take the spotlight (bear in mind that the piano part will carry an awful lot of the music’s emotional weight itself) or at least question the soloist’s supremacy and ‘challenge’ them for the number one spot. The partnership is an equal one.

I love to accompany. It’s not only a challenge but it’s a chance to make music with other people – almost certainly the best way. My ‘training’ as an accompanist, if I can call it that, came when I was asked to play the organ for church services. It sounded straightforward enough – play something before the service, something after and five hymns in between. My ten-year-old self was somewhat surprised to find, halfway through the first verse of the first hymn, that the congregation was singing a few words behind what I was playing (they tend to do that). So I slowed down. I then found that they would sometimes pause at the ends of lines in some hymns, where no pause was indicated. It caught me unawares a few times before I learned not only to see it coming but also to anticipate when the congregation was going to move on. As I got older and more experienced, I started to think that maybe the congregation didn’t always know best and that the meaning of the hymn might be better conveyed at a faster tempo. I started to push the tempo in some hymns and make the congregation keep up with me. Some people were a little surprised by this but some would come up after the service and say how glad they were not to have to sing at a funereal pace the whole time. I’ll often bring the same attitude to accompanying instrumentalists. The pianist usually has far more notes to play than the ‘soloist’. They bring the harmony, much of the rhythmic impetus and sense of structure to the performance. This being the case, I think the pianist has a right to impose themselves on the music-making and not simply ‘behave themselves’. That doesn’t mean bulldozing one’s way through a piece with no regard for the soloist, but it does mean that the pianist does not always have to be ‘subservient’ to their partner!

I’ve talked about the playing and the music. But there is another factor which can make playing the piano a challenge and that’s the instrument itself. Most of the pianist’s playing takes place at home on their own instrument. But what about the occasions when they play elsewhere? For exams or concerts, for example? An orchestral musician will get used to their instrument and take it with them wherever they go. They might find themselves in an unfamiliar room or concert hall or facing a rather large audience. But they will have the comfort of holding a familiar instrument. They know its weight, feel and shape. The bow or strings are known quantities. The wind player knows, for example, how heavy or light are the keys on their flute or oboe. But the pianist, unless they are a renowned concert pianist with the means to take their piano with them, is at the mercy of whichever instrument they encounter at the performance venue.

When I auditioned for a place at music college, I had practised Beethoven’s Waldstein Sonata, which starts with the same chord played quickly and fairly quietly 14 times. I sat down at the piano provided and found the action to be really light and uneven. Playing softly suddenly became a real challenge and playing evenly a nightmare. Needless to say, the opening went badly. (The rest didn’t go much better!). As a student, I got a job playing for a ‘historical dance class’. (Watching American students skip around trying to dance a pavan while I played Noel Coward songs was more hysterical than historical). The piano in the studio was in such poor condition that I had to arrive 15 minutes early, take off the front panel and insert rulers and rubbers into various parts of the action just to get some of the notes to play. If only they’d had a digital piano! Many pianists will have similar experiences in which their many hours of hard work could be undone by a strange or poorly maintained instrument.

Despite the challenges I’ve mentioned, I still see the piano as being the ‘best’ instrument. Its self-sufficiency, range, variety of colours, the music and its sheer power raise it, to my mind, over every other instrument. I’m biased, of course.  Yes, it’s a pain to have to battle with an unruly instrument. Yes, piano music can sometimes seem to ask the pianist to play more notes than they have fingers. And yes, it’s embarrassing to play on an out-of-tune piano (it might not be my fault but it certainly spoils my playing). But what other instrument lets you play Bach with clarity one minute and then conjure up one of Debussy’s impressionist soundscapes the next?  Or spin one of Chopin’s beautiful melodies before having a good thump through some Bartok? However frustrating the piano may sometimes be, you can’t beat it!